Page 82 of Wicked Games

Another sharp, agonized gasp escaped her lips, and she collapsed to the ground, blood pooling around her side.

I fell to my knees and let out a strangled cry, tears flooding my face. Everything seemed to blur as my mind struggled to process what had just happened. April couldn’t be dead. She was just here a few seconds ago. She couldn’t really be gone.

Brooke fell to her knees beside me, clinging to my shoulder. She tried to say something, but only a broken sob ended up spilling out.

“What the hell just happened?” Jasmine said from somewhere behind us. “Did she get shot?”

“Yes,” Zach replied, voice thick with emotion. “There’s either a sniper somewhere behind the wall, or some sort of automated sniping system. I don’t know. But that was definitely a gunshot.”

“Could she…” Jasmine paused and cleared her throat. “Could she survive that? Like, maybe she’s just injured, and we can somehow get her off the board?”

Zach stood stock-still, staring at all the blood seeping across the black and white squares. “Courteney,” he said in a hollow voice. “Is she… is she gone?”

Courteney looked down at April’s motionless form and nodded listlessly. “I don’t think she’s breathing.”

“Maverick, Hudson… what can you guys see?” Zach asked. His pitch had risen, adding a frantic air to his question. Clearly, he was hoping for a miracle. I was hoping, too. Praying, begging, clinging to the fragile thread of hope that Jasmine was right and April was only injured.

Maverick looked over at April’s limp body. “I think Courteney’s right,” he said. “It looks like she’s not breathing.”

“She looks dead to me,” Hudson bluntly added.

In that moment, the room seemed to fall silent. Brooke’s sobs faded away along with my own, and all I could focus on was April’s long blonde hair splayed out around her pale face.

That hair was the first thing I ever noticed about her when she waved me over to her desk in English class and took me under her wing. Beautiful and light, just like her soul. She was the first person at Babylon to show me any kindness, and she’d quickly become the best friend I ever made. Now that beautiful soul had been ripped away in a sick, twisted game, and the grief of it was threatening to consume me whole.

It was so cruel. So heartless. So unfair.

Anger suddenly boiled up beneath my sorrow, directed not only at the game that had stolen April from me, but at the senseless randomness of it all. What had she done to deserve this? What hadanyof us done to deserve it?

I didn’t see or hear the rest of the game. I was too devastated, too blinded with heartache and guilt. I kept replaying April’s final moments over and over in my mind, wishing I’d noticed her mistake a split-second earlier. If I had, I could’ve called out to her sooner, just before her foot came down on D5, and the whole thing could’ve been a narrow miss.

“Hey, Carey.” Maverick’s voice drifted into my ear, soft and soothing. “It’s over. Courteney, Hudson, and I made it across.”

I snapped out of my reverie and looked up at him. “Oh,” was all I managed to get out.

“We have to leave.”

I shook my head and returned my gaze to April’s blonde head. “No,” I whispered. “I want to stay here. With April.”

“You can’t. I’m sorry. The Game Master just announced that the room is closing in five minutes. We’re supposed to go to the drawing room for lunch now. Not that any of us feel like eating.”

“Oh,” I murmured again. I didn’t know what else to say. Which words existed that could possibly convey the scale of the misery inside me?

“Let me help you up.” Maverick hooked an arm under my shoulder and pulled me to my feet. At the same time, he used his other arm to help Brooke up. “Zach, do you want to help Brooke walk? I’ll help Carey.”

“Sure.” Zach slung an arm around Brooke’s trembling shoulder. His other arm went around Courteney.

Jasmine walked alone, arms wrapped around herself. Behind her, Hudson trudged with his hands in his pockets, eyes cast to the floor.

Maverick leaned down and murmured in my ear. “Ready?”

“No,” I said listlessly. “I really don’t want to leave April here.”

“I get it.” His voice had turned husky. “I’m so sorry, baby. I wish I could’ve stopped it.”

“Me too.” My voice cracked. “I should’ve told her to stop sooner.”

“Hey.” Maverick cradled my chin in one hand, forcing me to look up at his face. “It wasn’t your fault. You can’t let yourself get into that guilt spiral. Take it from a guy who’s been there.” He hesitated and went on. “I was there right up until the other night with you. You really helped me, just by talking to me and listening to me. That’s so rare, you know? Having someone really listen to you instead of just waiting for their turn to speak. Someone who isn’t being paid to do it.”

---